History
The village claims to be the real birthplace of William Shakespeare as the bubonic plague was rife in Stratford-upon-Avon at the time of the bard's birth and during times of plague Clifford Chambers rectory was used as a refuge.
It is known that the moated manor house was visited in the 16th century by several well-known poets of the time such as Michael Drayton, Ben Jonson and Shakespeare. This was because the father of the lady of the house was a patron to young poets at the time. Many of the houses were still owned by the occupants of the manor house right up until after the Second World War. It was the lady of the manor who 'switched on' the village's electricity supply when it was connected to the national grid in 1933.
During the Second World War children from the Roman Catholic school in Edgbaston, Birmingham lived in the village due to emergency evacuation from the bombed city. Shortly after the war deep-texture furnishing fabric from Clifford Chambers mill was developed. This was later used in the rebuilt Coventry Cathedral and on the QE2 ocean liner.
Read more about this topic: Clifford Chambers
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“History is the present. That’s why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth.”
—E.L. (Edgar Lawrence)
“The thing that struck me forcefully was the feeling of great age about the place. Standing on that old parade ground, which is now a cricket field, I could feel the dead generations crowding me. Here was the oldest settlement of freedmen in the Western world, no doubt. Men who had thrown off the bands of slavery by their own courage and ingenuity. The courage and daring of the Maroons strike like a purple beam across the history of Jamaica.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
“All objects, all phases of culture are alive. They have voices. They speak of their history and interrelatedness. And they are all talking at once!”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)